Saturday, August 30, 2014
Thinkbox Sequoia May be Fastest Processor of Big Point Clouds
The CAD Insider: I had a preview of Thinkbox's point cloud processing software last year at SIGGRAPH; this year it is announced, and next year it ships. Thinkbox wants to be the biggest, fastest processor of point cloud data for the CAD industry, and they spent a whole year talking to people who work with such data, before starting to program. Which means the software has some pretty nice functions
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think most people that watch animated movies do not really think about the intricacy of what they are seeing. Which is good, because they shouldn't have to. Seeing the photos and reading the stats of the software, I'm quickly realizing the minute decisions and architecture behind the billowing and organic images we see as a final product.
I had never really thought about animation computing, but it is very easy to see why a cloud based system would be very useful so that many people could work on a project at the same time. I also think it's very cool how thorough the developers were in talking to the people who would be using their product. I have found when using products that were relatively new that sometimes the obscure features and workflow conveniences I am used to in more refined softwares, can really break the deal when it come to my comfort and eagerness to use the newer product.
Having done simple particle animation in After Effects, I have an idea of how much processing power (and time) it takes to create every single dot. Thus, it's fascinating and awe-inspiring how many points this system can handle.
It took me a couple of minutes to read the actual article, and then another 20-30 minutes of reading the Wikipedia article on point clouds and the relevant branch articles on NURBS surfaces and surface reconstruction to actually understand why what they say their software does is impressive. That being said, it does sound impressive, although a little pie-in-the-sky. A two or three year development process that sounds like it is trying to be a software that revolutionizes the personal CAD work market, I think they are going to have to work out some functionality still.
Post a Comment